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Lanier Summer Report #2

Since our return from Lake Guntersville I’ve fished a few times out on the lake and it seems that not much has changed since my last report. The bass are out on the brush piles in full force but getting them is just a little tougher than it was a month ago. Today we caught them on the drop shot as shallow as 15 feet and as deep as 40 feet but most have been around 25-30 feet in and around brush. A month ago I was loading the boat using Robo worms in Aarons Morning Dawn on the drop shot but that bite has slowed considerably so we’ve had to change our color tactics. It seems the fish are liking the lighter colored worms right now and Lisa has been doing well on a clear white ice color scheme that my buddy makes for us in his shop. I’ve been doing ok on my little 4-5 inch sky blue drop shot worms but Lisa has the magic touch and has been wearing them out on her ice worms. Here’s a pic of Lisa and her new favorite drop shot worm color.
Drop shotting has been hit and miss for us but when the bite is going good we can get a dozen or two a day but not very many big ones right now. I’ve been using light tackle spinning gear with 6lb test fluorocarbon line, Mustad twist free or VMC Spin Shot hooks and a 3/8 ounce weight about 18 inches below the hook.

The big ticket item for me has been the topwater bass bite this summer. If there is a little chop on the water I could probably sit out in the heat and catch fish all day on my emerald topwater popper on points and humps. The bass are pushing singled out bluebacks to the surface all day long and the emerald popper is a great imitation of a blueback getting hammered on the surface by a bass. I’ve been using a lot of splashing and popping to get the basses attention and the chop on the surface causes enough of a distortion to fool the bass into hitting the popper. Here’s a couple pics we took this morning with the emerald popper and a couple nice bass on top.I’ve also been catching a few by adding some red eyes and a red dressed trailer hook. Here’s a pic of that color pattern and a nice bass on it.
If I feel like the topwater popper isn’t working or there’s no chop, over the past few days I’ve been using a suspending Lucky Craft Pointer blueback colored jerkbait when I see the fish are moving around in the upper water column or suspending over the brush. I like the blueback pointer because when you jerk it a few times it creates a good flash in the water and I can flash it and suspend it over the brush and usually I can get a few to slam it while letting it sit on a long pause. It’s a fun little bait to use and I’ve been using a jerk-jerk-slow moving pause pattern for it to be successful. I’m still throwing a underspin but it really hasn’t been getting very many bites lately.
Here’s a little video I made last week that kind of explains what I’ve been doing and a couple fish we’ve caught over the past few days.
For the stripers we’re using 2 baits to get bit. The first is the big Ben Parker spoon and the second is a big 7.5 inch swimbait on a 1-2 ounce jig head. The hardest thing about the stripers right now is finding them. Once you find them just dropping the spoon up and down is all you need to do to attract more fish and catch a few. If I really want to have some fun and we’re over a lot of active fish, another bait I’ve been using is a big swimbait vertically jigged just like the spoon on a Heavy 7’9″ Mojo Bass rod and a Revo baitcaster with heavy flouro. I can also cast it, count it down to around 40-60 feet and bring it back to the boat in a horizontal retrieve. You can figure out your sink rate with the swimbait jig by dropping it under the transducer cone and counting it down while watching it on the graph. Swimbaits and spoons are a lot of fun this time of year on Lanier for stripers and it’s pretty easy to catch a few if you can find them. Around the river channel or the deep 100 foot ditches near the mouths of our south end creeks have been the best locations to look for the stripers. Here’s one of a few I caught this morning on the spoon. If If you can stand the heat, now is a pretty good time to get out there and get a few. Surface temps are in the upper 80’s and the bite has been varying from early morning to late evening but the best bite seems to be when the sun gets up. Good luck out there and take plenty of water, cover up or use sun screen.